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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mallus" data-source="post: 5809962" data-attributes="member: 3887">Here's some direct evidence...It is necessary to simulate in-game magic because out-of-game magic does not exist. It is necessary to simulate in-game melee combat because staging lethal sword fights in your living room is impractical. Also, illegal in most non-failed states.It is necessary to simulate things like horse riding, iron portcullis-lifting, and armor-crafting, et cetera because D&D is usually played in homes, apartments, and clubs, not in fields, actual dungeons, and forges. However, it is not absolutely necessary to simulate speech acts. Those can be performed --safely and at negligible cost-- in the common places D&D is played. You should note I was simply being literal in the bit you quoted. That's your assumption, not mine. That's nowhere near what I wrote. I certainly never said there is no skill involved in speech -- that's pretty much the opposite of my position. I think speech/in-character negotiations represents as strategic and intellectual a challenge as anything in the game, which is why I'm hesitant to handle it too abstractly. I was thinking 'before', but either would do. Locks and traps are an odd case in old-school D&D. They're often presented both as puzzles the players are meant to solve and as more abstract obstacles a specific PC class is meant to solve. So my answer is: in certain cases, yes. Again it depends. Feat of raw physical strength aren't analogous to puzzles. There's nothing for the players to 'solve'. There's no game there. So no, describing a pure feat of strength is meaningless.However, any player is free to come up with some smart way of bending the bars, a la McGyver. Are you really suggesting LARPers aren't also simulating combat and magic use. If so, tell me where these people meet. I gotta check this out! No. I was merely saying there is no absolute requirement to simulate things like trap-finding/disarming mechanics. This is not the equivalent of saying they shouldn't exist. Note how dismissive 'talk a better game' is. As if players who enjoy solving in-game challenges more directly are kinda like BS artists. Oy...Less reading into, more reading out of, please. Yes, communication skills can be learned. I didn't suggest otherwise. A reasonable assumption that does nothing to contradict what I wrote. Some people are good with mechanics, some are good a talking pretty, some sly devils are good both! Yes. Yes. Just talking relies on DM adjudication. The DM still needs to translate the skill check results into the appropriate NPC behavior, ie, the King won't give the PCs his entire army just because someone rolled a 32 for Diplomacy. Which means a great deal of the social encounter is still being decided by the DM. My group likes, trusts, and respects one another. We don't need to rely on bribes (though I wouldn't turn down the occasional bottle of bourbon, if any of my players are reading this...).</blockquote>

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